The Role of Regulatory Quality in Shaping Input-Driven Agricultural Emissions: Evidence from Lower-Middle-Income Countries

Yıldırım H., Karadeniz Y., Doğan M., Özkan T., Lögün A.

Kahramanmaraş Sütçü İmam Üniversitesi Tarım ve Doğa Dergisi, cilt.29, sa.2, ss.451-469, 2026 (TRDizin)

Özet

The agricultural sector continues to be one of the fundamental pillars of economic development and food security, particularly in lowermiddle-income countries where agricultural productivity plays an important role in growth and income generation. However, inputintensive agricultural production can place increasing pressure on environmental quality. Among these inputs, chemical fertilizers stand out as one of the main sources of agricultural emissions due to nutrient surpluses and emission-intensive application processes. This study examines the impact of fertilizer use on agricultural emissions in lower-middle-income countries over the period 2002–2022 and investigates to what extent regulatory quality can mitigate the environmental pressures associated with fertilizer-intensive production. To identify both average and distributional effects, the empirical analysis relies on Common Correlated Effects (CCE) estimators and Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR). The results indicate that fertilizer use is one of the key determinants of agricultural emissions and has a positive effect on emission levels. In addition, regulatory quality is also positively associated with emissions. However, regulatory quality may simultaneously weaken the emission-increasing impact of fertilizer use. The quantile estimates show that this moderating effect varies across the emissions distribution. In this respect, the study contributes to the literature by providing new empirical evidence on how regulatory quality shapes the environmental consequences of fertilizer-intensive agriculture.